When the Cat's Away
by SinisterExaggerator
Summary: Reporter Daria Morgendorffer uncovers a mystery that shows how truth can masquerade as delusion...if only it were.
1. Part 1

Daria Morgendorffer set down her coffee mug and peered down at the mess of notes awaiting her on the diner table. No surface was left uncovered by the scattered arrangement of annotations, pictures, labels, and scribbled transcriptions. The facts, however, remained clouded, and the mere simplicity of it all prodded madly at her. _Why does the Lawndale Sun-Herald always have to get on top of these types of capers?_ she wondered. _And even worse, to pick me?_ She groaned with dismay. _Now I feel guilty for eating them up in my adolescence._ She took another swig of her very strong and very caffeine-laden black coffee. _Eh, guilt gone._

She studied the papers another time. They painted a story shrouded in mystery: something was striking the heart of suburbia, and perhaps the hearts of its residents. "Strike" was such a strong word, though; it didn't seem as if the supposed victims were brutalized so much as they disappeared. No bodies, no bone fragments, no nothing. At this point, "thin air" did not even begin to adequately describe the situation. There were three victims in total: Sandi Griffin, Brittany Taylor, and Angela Li. _At least who or whatever is doing this has exceptional taste,_ she thought with a smirk. Her conscience would have smacked her silly had utter puzzlement not done so first. What made it all the more befuddling was the fact that, firstly, all of the missing were last seen in the middle of the town. This was no Metalmouth working here, if there _were_ anything; the forest was always at least twenty miles away from the site of last sighting. Secondly, all of this was revolving around one man's testimony.

A glossy photograph, marked with the man's name, Heinz Heilbronner, revealed his likeness; thickly creased wrinkles crossed in sweeping tangents from one thin white strand of hair to another. He looked rather old, almost definitely bordering on centenarian status. His eyes exuded a faded grey pallor, which seemed to contradict the wide grin on his face. If Daria hadn't known any better, she would have thought that he was crying for help inside. She didn't pay any mind to that at the moment. For now, the interpersonal connection was being saved for another one of her contacts, Jane Lane. Speaking of which, where was she? As the last person to see one victim, Sandi Griffin, alive, as well as to keep Daria sane, Jane was important, so long as coverage and staving off psychosis went. Fifteen minutes had passed since the time they had planned to meet, and she was never one to be fashionably late. Or for that matter, fashionable at all. Then again, the racecar drivers in _Rally X_ were usually more responsible than Jane behind the wheel. She was probably being exposed to more middle fingers than a carpal tunnel specialist. With that in mind, Daria kept an avid ear to the door as she resumed poring over the flurry of information.

With Heilbronner's reputation, though, misinformation looked much more probable. Normally, men of his age shone brilliantly with the musky aura of experience and wisdom. He, on the other hand, proved to be a walking example of senility, so much so that to think of him as "walking" was easily an exaggeration. With his constant calls to 911, it came as a great wonder to imagine how the other emergencies got through, and more importantly, were responded to. He was always screaming about _something_, be it bones in the basement or mystic cults in the backyard or screaming mice. The screaming mice were his trademark; it was particularly common knowledge that on one fateful early morning, the fire department had to retrieve him from his roof. Retrieving the neighbors' sleep did not have as direct of a solution, sadly. One wondered if he, while seeking a nice, long, paranoia-driven talk with a stranger, mistook the 911 number for a 900 number. Daria took little pride in the fact that her higher-ups at the paper actually took the guy seriously. It was already enough of a presumption to assume a link between the vanishings, let alone trust a man who was essentially a cult leader without any followers.

_4:30 P. M._, the clock shouted. This is officially starting to get irritating, she thought as she pulled out her cell phone. With a few taps on the keypad, she punched in Jane's home number and waited. The incessant hum of the dial tone ruled over all for the next thirty seconds. Finally, the message popped up from the other end of the line: "Hello, Earthling. You have reached the Lane residence. Unless, of course, you're meaning to talk with most of them, in which case, you are SOL, good buddy." A call to her cell phone yielded similar results: "This is Jane Lane's answering machine. If you aren't Jane Lane, leave a message. If you are, it must be Tuesday." Daria ended the call with a _click_ and sighed with relief. She was probably driving in her car. She bet that she wasn't picking up to avoid distraction. Yeah, that was it, to avoid distraction. She was just dead set on getting there, and completely and utterly safe by all conceivable and inconceivable senses of the word.

About two hours and five cups of coffee later, she stopped believing.


	2. Part 2

Daria exited her Volkswagen Beetle and feasted her eyes on the sight in front of her. Casa Lane stood as a monument to those who fought the noble battle of home improvement and had their asses unceremoniously handed to them. Its most awe-inspiring feature was the fact that, in twenty years, the place hadn't changed a bit. It remained the very picture of dilapidation, in its most exquisite sense. Paint seemed to chip away at itself, in a suicidal bid to escape the mold-encrusted walls. Splintery planks shrouded the windows like a primitive form of duct tape. Only the kudzu creeping around corners alerted passers-by of any presence of life. She hoped there was.

She approached the stoop and knocked. A hinge loosened. _That's more normal than I want to give that credit for._ "Trent?" she called. "Are you there?"

After a few agonizing moments, the door creaked open. A middle-aged man stood in the jamb.

"Hey, Daria," Trent purred. It took her a while to recognize him, and wow, something had changed. But behind the five o'clock shadow masking his soul patch and, if she could trust her eyes, the beginning of a beer gut, his voice still held the same gravelly timbre of years past. A simple question brought her mind back down to the matter at hand. "So what brings you here?"

"I just need to know something," she said, nerves jumping to action. "Is Jane here?"

He stroked at the stubble on his chin and thought for a moment. "When I fell asleep, she was going out to her car." Both of them instinctively turned their heads towards the driveway. "It's not there. She must be with y-_oh_."

"That's what I thought." She took a deep breath and stared at the ground. "I think we need to file a missing persons report."

"I can see why. Can I just go feed Zachary and Taylor first?"

"The cats?" Daria asked, steam starting to exit her ears. "How could you be wondering about cats at a time like this?"

"I wonder about many things." Trent took a pregnant pause, as if to channel universal forces for inspiration. It didn't come. "Like, what are you even doing back in Lawndale?"

"Tell you in the car. Just do what you're going to do and get in." She started up her car as he shuffled back into the house, aimlessly wandering in search of cat food. He emerged two minutes later, his face pale.

"If it's low blood sugar," she said, "I have expired candy in the back." He said nothing, just walked up to her driver's side window and tapped on it. She rolled it down.

"The cats are missing. So is a big chunk of the kitchen window."

Her eyes widened at the news. "Are you sure? Maybe they went into the basement. I can think of how they can mistake the smell of marijuana for catnip."

"Cats can't open doors like that. Or at least most of them. I've seen some of them online with little tennis balls around their heads taking pictures of themsel-"

"Trent!"

"Sorry, getting in." The Beetle started rolling. "So, you're down here why?"

Daria sighed at the memory. It was a story that had been told too many times. "There was a strike at the _Boston Globe_. The editors wanted me on their side, and the other reporters wanted me on theirs. It was like the two women who went to Solomon with the baby, only I actually would have preferred being cut in half. That's when I heard the Sun-Herald was hiring, and of course, because my fellow journalists just had to be so inhumanly inept at their line of work, they gave me this story. All you need to know is that they're making me interview a deluded old man. What about you?"

"Just laying low, mostly. Both of us aren't raking in too much cash, so we're stuck in that old house. Doesn't help that the Spiral broke up. I have a few gigs now and then." He leaned in closer. "Don't tell anybody...but I've been doing covers."

"I don't see the shame in that. Then again, I don't remember ever having any."

"Nickelback covers."

"Never mind."

Trent sank back into his seat. He sank back even more as he looked ahead. "This isn't the way you came in, is it?" They had gone past the dead end street by now.

"The diner and the police station are on different sides of the town. Why do you ask?" Before she could receive an answer, her eyes followed his index finger to the side of the road. A trembling foot pounded on the brake. A blue sedan lay embedded in an oak tree.

"That's my ride," Trent said. "That's _our_ ride." His face, which was permanently stoic a moment before now displayed an exception to the rule. Judging by the way his eyes grew to give a terrified glare and his chin hit the felt interior, it was _the_ exception to the rule.

Daria could only stare in shock. The next step would be gory, she knew it. But it was the only way to know. She jogged across the road and arrived at the scene. The first thing that stood out was the fact that the tree hadn't splintered; the car looked as if it had been eased in rather than crashed. The tree cradled it much like a peg in a hole. She stood on tiptoes to look inside. It was going to be bloody and disgusting and covered in guts and brains and...nothing. The car was completely empty. She could see it, and it seemed so crystal clear. Then she realized that it wasn't her; the driver's side window was missing, cleanly swiped from the door. She darted back to the Beetle and immediately started driving.

"Is it bad?" Trent was fighting back tears. Daria held the wheel tighter and gnashed her teeth.

"Not in the way you're thinking about it." She saved the explanation for the red lights. His eyes were dry by the time they reached the police station.

At ten o'clock in the evening, Daria walked through her apartment door with full vigor. Trent and the LPD were both where they needed to be. Her itinerary needed a second look. _8:00 A. M. Griffin house. (Working women have to work.) 10:00 A. M. Taylors. 12:00 P. M. Ms. Poitier (Li's domestic; be sure to be up on French). 2:00 P. M. Heilbronner. (Don't mention the war.)_

_These interviews tomorrow are going to be murder_, she thought.


	3. Part 3

As Daria stepped anxiously out of the Beetle, she was greeted by the crumbling facade of an apartment complex. Ms. Li had taken up residence here, and with the information her other contacts were feeding her, Daria desperately needed to dig into this lead. From conversations with the Griffins and the Taylors, she had learned that both had disappeared, along their cats. But they numbered one or two at most, so any cold-blooded psychopath could easily snatch them up at once. No biggie. Li, however, had surrounded herself in a feline prison, maximum security self-imposed. Cats formed furry bars on the windows. Their body heat insulated the place, which otherwise operated on central air and broken spirits. They lined the doors like carnal bricks, which was an automatic booby trap to all except her Haitian housekeeper, who lived down the hall. That way, she could delay the inevitable gout from running the kitty gauntlet by at least a week. So obviously, there had to be _some_ cats left out of umpteen.

_"Mademoiselle Poitier? C'est moi, Daria."_ It was French, but it worked. She guided Daria over to the room where Li had wasted away her years, a fact which sounded more depressing than how it played out. Poitier said that the window was completely and cleanly missing when she found the room, which was itself in utter disrepair. Not a piece of furniture was left standing, except for the few shattered pieces of wood that didn't lose their ground in the struggle. Whatever had happened, it was nasty. Then again, that many cats against one intruder were bound to be. As Daria looked to the floor, she could spot only three cats sauntering around. The others, the housekeeper noted, had been spotted on the sidewalk below, tossed there in the rush to leave. The fire escape, it had seemed, had become quite the opposite: a means of entry, and lethally so. Was there ever something like it? The last killer with that type of overt flamboyance had broken his leg at Ford's Theatre. With Poitier's permission, she took the three cats with her, along with three carriers found in the back of the room. She set them beside her in her car. Whatever happened happened.

So what could this Heilbronner guy possibly know? Her editors claimed he had the answers, not them. _So did Alex Jones_, she thought, as she turned the corner towards a block full of ramshackle houses. This was the side of town that rested in the limbo between urban renewal and just "urban". For such a grey-area region, though, the population wasn't. It was only the extremely old or the very young that even conceived of living there. Daria stopped at one stately looking house; it was Victorian-style and looked about as old as she thought he was. There were no cars in the driveway. That was only because they were rotting in the backyard. She left the cats in their carriers, which somehow found space inside the cramped interior of the Beetle. She knocked at the door.

_The hinges seem to be loose around here_, she thought as one tumbled to the ground again. The door opened. It was Heilbronner, and he looked just plain disheveled, as if he had been for a grueling run. By the way he stumbled on his own feet, she knew that wasn't possible.

"It's you, right? Yes?" There was a hint of desperation in his wiry voice. Daria looked around to check if she were in Christ's way or not.

_Nope. Not even a bodhisattva._ "Yes, I'm that reporter. Now, I've been told that you know something about a few disappearances in the area?"

His face froze. He backed up slightly into the house, shady but inviting. "I think you should come in."

"Erm...okay." _Have mace, will travel_, she told herself, stepping into his house. The room reeked of blood, tears, sweat, and mold. Mainly mold. Piles of old newspapers amassed in the corner. Strangely, they looked less like broadsides and more like single sheets. She could barely make out the words "LAWNDALE SHOPPER" at the top, followed by what looked like "H. HEILBRONNER, EDITOR". Whatever his operation was, it wasn't anything like competition, so her editors weren't attempting to disprove him.

"So, the people missing? What do you know?"

"It wasn't me. It _was_ me, but it was them." It took a moment for the gravity of the situation to register. Did he just confess to what was, at most benign, a case of abduction? Never before had she seen the blame so abruptly shifted in one sentence, save for Quinn's meandering run-ons. She watched as he struggled to pull open a bag of peanuts, and ducked as they soared in the air toward her, breaking apart on the wooden floor and the edges of her skirt. She imagined the same white hands cradling a trigger, or holding a rusty shovel in the air, or hoisting up a corpse. There was no way he was the perp. But the article wasn't going to bullshit through itself.

"Wait, so you made these people disappear? Explain."

"Yes, but they took me. They made me." He stared back and forth, as if searching for security equipment. Daria couldn't imagine anything younger than a slide rule in his house. As if to confirm her suspicions, there was a little tapping and creaking in the walls. It was most definitely the result of the house existing twenty years too long. Architectural inefficiencies aside, she was beginning to get intrigued.

"Who are 'they', Mr. Heilbronner?"

"I'd say, but they don't like that. They don't want anyone to know. You might get hurt if you knew." A sudden rap in the wall surprised both of them. Daria thought it was far more likely that the house would hurt her before any malevolent being.

"These boots were made for kicking," she said. She crushed a peanut that had landed beside her. "Trust me, if anyone comes your way, there'll be two more cracked nuts in this house, OK? Now, please, just tell me."

The old man sighed. There was no way out of this. "Fine. I always try to tell people this, but no one believes me. That's why I think they're some very clever creatures indeed. For choosing me, that is. _Mice_."

Good God. Trainwrecks were more graceful. She got up and started toward the door. "That's it. I'm out of here."

"No! Wait-" From the corner of the room, a clatter sounded on the floor and, as if blended, a scream echoed from the darkness. Daria tried with all her might to allocate it to a man, a woman, child, anything human, but not even Tiny Tim could register so high._He's just looking for attention, just ignore him, just ignore him, just..._ Somehow denial made her want to turn around even more. Heinz Heilbronner was on the floor, surrounded by clumps of grey, which danced around him, taunting-somehow, he didn't make a good enough Gulliver. A select few turned towards her. _Mice. Damn foreshadowing._ The mice in front drew closer and closer to his ear. Were they were working for Frank Booth or something?

"Run," he whispered, raising his head an inch from the floor. His words were choked, like he was teetering on the brink of death. "Please. Don't judge me for what I'm about to do." As one mouse crawled in, he sank back to the ground, still. Half of Daria wanted to take his advice; the other half wanted to take his pulse. Most of the mice looked immobile. Besides, they were mice. There was literally an entire trade dedicated to their extermination. With her evolutionary edge in mind, Daria strode towards him. The clack of her Doc Martens barely outsounded her heartbeat. But what about his? She looked down at the old man lying below her. His eyes looked sufficiently rolled. _He looks colder than Quinn._ Looking was not the same as feeling. She placed her quivering hand above his head, growing ever so nearer. And nearer. The room felt empty, for some reason. She looked back. It was the same scene. The same could not be said for when she turned around, as she tumbled to the ground, pushed down by his decrepit, rising form.

A blazing red shone from his eyes, lifeless, yet not inactive. The constantly worried expression on his face was as blank-looking as his pale skin. His movements were short, stiff, and mechanical, less like a man and more like a machine. Daria got up and attempted to find some other part of the hideous tableau in front of her to look at, to keep her mind away from the thing in front of her. It wasn't the mice. It couldn't be the mice. But if there was one thing it was, it was the hundreds of pairs of red dots lining the floor.

All pointed at her.

There was a moment where she understood. She understood the doom in his eyes. She understood the paranoia that had developed into worthwhile fear. That changed as he, or what looked like the rest of him, darted toward her, poised to grab. Poised to kill. A soprano, almost chipmunk-like tone emerged from within him. "Attack."

The screen door was waiting.


	4. Part 4 (Conclusion)

Daria could feel the effects of a pizza-fed adolescence as she sprinted toward the car, shaking her pursuers by a grandiose distance of one yard. Turning the ignition, she could see the old man trotting behind her, at the complete mercy of the wave of grey following. To her horror, that was no metaphor; they had lined up in a sort of vertical phalanx, crashing and crawling cohesively amid the unkept grass. She waited for them to spill over onto the pavement-what was some mouse blood on her tires for her safety? She didn't have to wait; with disbelieving eyes, she witnessed at least a thousand more emerge from the street in front of her. Strangely, Heinz was nowhere to be seen. Better the lack of a vehicular manslaughter charge for her. She was now surrounded by a veritable sea of mice. But it was it to be conquered? Daria had no time for questions.

She floored it.

_Instant roadkill feels pretty smooth_, she thought. _How am I gliding over so many carcasses?_ The Beetle slowed to a halt, conveniently in the same direction as the mice moving by her. _Great. I'm not running over them. They're running under me._ The car moved ahead at a snail's pace, like a funeral barge to the bonfire. Somehow, she felt that comparison was much too apt. But, if impending death was awaiting her, she was going to have some fun with it.

She rolled down the passenger side window. "I for one welcome our new mouse overlords," she called.

"Do you?" a high voice answered back.

"GAH!" she cried, looking back to her left. Heinz Heilbronner was standing up against the driver's side window. Accordingly, a shed door lay open in the distance. That probably explained the hacksaw in his hand..._shit_.

"Oh, you will welcome us." It was coming from Heilbronner, but not. The red irises in his eyes lit up with the temerity of a cacodemon. "For the thousand years of you humans' existence, us mice have been crushed, gassed, shot..." His gaze, if it were really his, shifted to the three carriers in the passenger seat, and narrowed to the cats within. "...and hunted. I see you have some of the culprits there. Perhaps you could do us mice a solid. It'll make your extermination a bit easier, save you the pain of seeing you and the rest of your species crushed. Hand them over. Easy through that open window, huh?"

That window went up. "What makes you think you'd win if you killed all the cats around here? You'd still be cat meat in any other town."

"We're not going after cats in the long run. We're going after you. There are about ten thousand times our number in this one town, and we're carrying a goddamn Volkswagen. Once we pave the streets with your blood, people will take notice. _Important_ people._Government_ people. More importantly, _killable_ people. It's not a long way to D. C. from Lawndale, you know. But enough for exposition. How about some FORCE?"

Daria jerked back in her seat as he thrust the hacksaw through the driver's side window. He smiled leerily at her, as if he were about to grant her one imported straight from Glasgow. _Hack! Hack!_ As she was carted slowly forward, he started to cut vertically down the window. _So much for keeping his MO hidden_, she mused. _Wait, what would happen if I tried this?_ She took hold of the gear shift and put it firmly in reverse. _Worth a try._ She pounded on the gas, and she tore out of the mice's grip. Or most of them-Heinz's possessor cut into the Beetle's front trunk, slipping a hand into the hole as he supported himself on the side of her car. _Of course_, she thought, putting the car in drive. The mice were starting to file backwards, much faster than before. They lined the street now, but not the driveways, or the lawns for that matter. She laid waste to about thirty garden gnomes as she raced across the lawns, bypassing the horde at a good sixty miles an hour.

_Where to go? A police station sounds good-no, they'll use that chance to off the bureaucracy. No emergency services._ "Heinz" was starting to cut across the top of the window. _Okay, I'm halfway to death at the hands of animals whose skulls are smaller than my pubic bone. Where do I go? Where do I g-_ An empty truck partially blocked the road ahead. She stepped on the brake, but still side-swiped it, the passenger side of her car grating against the truck's cab. The noise was brutal, like a laryngitic hobo flossing his teeth with sheet metal, but not the impact; only the outside was touched. She finally stalled. Something looked weird in her rear-view mirror, though. _Strange, the mice stopped at that noise. Even the ones not directly behind the car._ She set the car into high gear and started again. _I have to find somewhere where that kind of noise gets emitted on a regular basis._ She sped down a back road and headed for the other side of the city. _I think I know._

* * *

Any other day, Daria would have had the civility to park in the driveway, but something about the madman (madmouse?) cutting away at the last side of her window denied her the ability. She drove onto the lawn of Casa Lane, parked passenger-side first against the stair, and leaped out, piling the carriers onto the stoop with her.

"Trent!" she called, knocking wildly. Heinz had taken notice, and was starting to move the car away, with help from the mice, who were starting to crowd upon the lawn behind him. "Open the hell up!"

Trent came to the door. "Hey, Daria. What brings you here ag-the hell?"

"Will explain in a moment," she muttered, ushering herself and the cats in. She checked the door again and grimaced; it was starting to buckle slightly. _Damn hinge._ "OK, long story short, I have to press my body weight against this door to prevent us from dying a horrible death, but just do what I'm about to tell you."

"Yeah," he motioned, absent-mindedly alarmed.

"Is that physically possible...?"

"JUST FREAKING GUN IT! Turn it up to eleven or something. Start playing and singing any Nickelback song in your repertoire. Got it?"

He nodded and descended into the basement. She could feel pounding against the door, could hear the unnerving chattering that species held so dear. A hacksaw emerged from the door above her head, then slid back out. "Trent, sometime today would be ni-" She was deafened by a cascade of badly tuned guitar chords, followed by Trent's over-amplified voice-a solid two on the Richter scale. He was reaching the second verse of "Photograph" (and both unfortunately and luckily for her, was singing it in the original key) when she decided to take a look through the newly-formed hacksaw hole in the door, against her better judgement. The car was far out of the way, but "Heinz" and the mice were dead still, the scratchy sound rattling through them to the point of paralysis.

Daria opened the carriers onto the porch. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty. Go out there and assert your dominance over those easily snatchable mice on the lawn there." The cats pounced upon them with glee.

* * *

Three hours later, Casa Lane's front lawn looked like it had seen the Charge of the Ultra-Light Brigade, a fact supported by the three cats' _very_ distended bellies. The "music" was still sounding from within the house. Heinz was still standing still. Daria walked up to him and noticed the tail sticking out of his ear. She gingerly pulled out the mouse attached to it, larger than the rest. The red in Heinz's eyes disappeared, and he dropped to the ground, utterly tired from the trip. The extreme amount of crabgrass cushioned his fall. Daria took the mouse into the house and placed it inside the carrier (which was unoccupied; those cats weren't going anywhere soon).

"Trent!" she shouted. "That's enough!" The noise stopped. He paced upstairs and followed her to the carrier.

"I will not be silenced!" the mouse shouted out. "Are you listening to me?"

"Talking mouse," Trent said. "Not even Jerry could do that."

"Can't say that about the slapstick violence," replied Daria. "Hold on. Mr. Heilbronner!"

Heinz was rubbing his forehead as he lay on the ground. He eyed the field of blood and bones and flesh and scowled. "I'm sorry for what I did! It wasn't me, it was the-" He saw Daria standing above him. "Oh. They're gone, right? Are they gone?"

"The evidence is around you," she said. "Let's get you home."

"Is there any way I can repay you?"

She shrugged. "A good eighteen hours of sleep will be enough." He walked to the car as Daria and Trent made way for the carrier.

"So what are you going to report?" he asked.

"Uh...I never thought I'd say this, but I hate to deceive the public. But I'll just go with 'lack of evidence' for now."

"And this guy?" he asked, pointing at the mouse.

"I demand release at once!" it cried.

"Oh, don't worry, you," responded Daria, a smirk tracing its way across her face. "You'll be released. I just get to choose where."

* * *

A strange package arrived at the Taylor household. "Brian," said Steve, "it's for you."

Brian opened it in his room. Inside was a box, containing a mouse of what seemed to him as grade-A caliber. Attached to its tail was a note:

_Dear Brian,_

_This is the mouse that killed your sister. I need not say more._

_Daria_

For the first time in his life, Brian experienced a strange feeling of conflict as he searched for the Bowie knife in his drawer.

**THE END**

* * *

Author's Note: So...yeah. In case you didn't spot it, this story was based off a gag in "A Tree Grows in Lawndale", involving the _Lawndale Shopper_, and more precisely, its editor (an eighty-year-old man who had to be rescued from his roof due to screaming mice "chasing him"). You can see where I came from there. Thanks for reading!


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